Chapter 49 Kai
KAI WOULD HAVE LIKED TO imagine that being pulled from the abyss would be like emerging from the longest of nightmares—that being back in his own world again, in his own time, with people he knew to be true and trustworthy, would make it easier to distinguish what was real from what was not.
Unfortunately for him, the world was quite literally being devoured by the sleepscape, and if he hadn’t known about the realms being merged, he would have taken one look at all the strange beasts and people who seemed plucked from storybooks and assumed they were all trapped together in someone’s truly fucked-up hallucinogenic dream.
He’d ridden on the back of a dragon, for Tides’ sake.
They’d flown to the Institute to retrieve Jae and Vera and a handful of Eclipse-born who’d been hiding in the woods nearby, and now they were at a safe house near the sea that was no longer just a sea, planning a prison break with people who could sprout dragon wings and wore actual armor and wielded genuine swords.
How the hell was Kai not supposed to question his reality.
But it was real. He had Baz at his side to remind him of it.
Kai didn’t want to leave reality behind for one second, but his presence was needed in the sleepscape.
No one had been able to make contact with those who’d been taken to the Institute—even Louis, the only Selenic Order member who’d stayed behind at the safe house, couldn’t reach them through the spiral mark they all had, as if the wards rendered that trick powerless.
And so Kai let himself be pulled into nightmares in the hope that his own magic would prove more useful.
Hers was the first nightmare he sought, knowing the bond they shared could not be stopped by wards. He felt responsible for Luce. No one should be subjected to the horrors of the Institute, but she, least of all. Not after all they’d been through.
It pained him to see how haunted she appeared in her nightmare—a cruel scene in which her newborn child was ripped from her arms by Clover, a representation of how powerless she must feel, unable to save her daughter from the very monster she’d once sought help from.
As the nightmare faded, Kai drawing the worst of its darkness into him, Luce noticed him with all the awareness of a Dreamer, recognizing him as real.
She launched herself into his arms and broke down into sobs, asking if he’d managed to reach Emory, despairing over the fact that she couldn’t use her own Dreamer magic to find her daughter in sleep.
“We’re going to get you all out of there,” Kai promised her. “But we need to know where everyone’s being kept, how many Regulators there are, every detail you can think of. I need you to help us piece all of it together. Can you do that?”
Luce gave him a determined nod. “If you do find Emory… tell her to hold on. Make sure she knows we’re all here for her.”
Kai did find Emory. Her Tidecaller power—even put to sleep by the Unhallowed Seal—called to him as it always did in sleep, a magnet pulling on his soul.
Yet it felt like she was just out of his reach.
He tried to talk to her, to make his presence known, but she couldn’t hear him.
Whatever they were doing to her must be horrific.
But Romie was there too, and Kai knew this was Romie, not Atheia.
A glimmer of hope in the dark, because if she was dreaming, if she was talking to him and helping him plan this jailbreak just as Luce had been, then surely there was still a chance for her.
A way, perhaps, for her to get rid of Atheia’s possession.
Two Dreamers trapped in a waking nightmare. A Tidecaller without her power. Countless Eclipse-born forced into a soulless, magicless existence that Kai remembered all too well for having lived through it himself.
They were going to save them all—and tear the Institute to the ground.